Okay, so this book is dated. And sometimes I am tempted to give a dated book extra credit because I get to study history while reading a story with plot and characters.
I liked this book a lot, it makes me want to read more from the period... except I think I may have already read some stories from this period! Which would suggest that this book is better than those other books I read and forgot.
This book tells a story that is very broad - in geography for one, there are characters that in their lifetime travel from coast to coast, canada to mexico, working miscellaneous jobs, finding different niches.
The writing style tends to be stream of conciousness, which took some getting used to for me, however it does serve to convey countless details about the nouns involved (get it? the people, places and things) - it's dense, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
If you like feminism, it isn't present - however there are strong characters who are women entering the workforce and being the masters of their own destinies.
This book is plot heavy. There isn't a lot of high falutent language, it's just stuff happening... "life happening," I'm sure you know that cliche - well that's this book - "life leading to WWI"
on a racist note, all the characters are white, pretty much.
Man, I'm having such a good time writing this review, I really don't know where to stop. I think I'll come back and edit it down later. I do recommend this book though, it would be fun to discuss!

Dos Passos and our own time.

"He’d come to see America as a permanently divided country.....he perceived, with special clarity, the conflicting sociopolitical forces that were shaping modern life and giving it its texture—forces that are still at work in our digitized Gilded Age."

https://www.newyorker.com/books/secon...

Published in 1930, this first book in the USA trilogy is set in various locations across the US during 1900-1917. It portrays “the American experience” during these years. It is quite creative for its time. The characters are fictional, but it also includes segments of non-fiction, such as headlines from the newsreels, biographies of notable people, song lyrics, and the author’s own memories. These merge into each other without separation or punctuation. There is a lot of discussion and involvement in the labor movement.

I particularly enjoyed the newsreels. They provide dates for the storyline, evoke a feeling for the time period, and often provide an implied criticism of what was just occurred in the narrative, taking to task some of the characters’ actions. This is more implied than stated but it is relatively easy to read between the lines. The author seems to be providing social commentary on “yellow journalism,” propaganda, and advertising in contributing to materialism.

It is a slice of the past, complete with viewpoints (by the characters, not the author) that will not sit well with a modern audience. For example, pretty much every ethnic slur is included in the dialogue. Most of the characters are rather unpleasant. This book is considered a classic so I’m glad I read it but also glad to be finished.

I got through 100+ pages, and just cannot finish this one. I was enjoying the story of Mac, but the newsreels and camera eyes made me crazy. No punctuation, big long run on sentences, and abruptly switching from one subject to another in the middle of it. I know this is some kind of personal expression in writing, but it's Not for me.

First book of a trilogy, giving a feel for life in the years leading up to WWII. This is not a linear story but a mishmash of chapters label NEWSREEL, The Camera Eye, mini biographies of people of the times, including Luther Burbank, Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, and Steinmetz. The bulk of the book is made up of a mix of short chapters of various characters who do eventually interact, Mac, Janey, J. Ward Morehouse, Eleanor Stoddard, and finally Charley on a ship steaming to France to be an ambulance mechanic in the war.

The 42nd Parallel is the opening salvo of John Dos Passos’s epic USA trilogy. This groundbreaking, experimental work is the novel as collage — cobbling together stories of several different “Everyman” protagonists, mini biographies of historically significant individuals, Newsreels of period headlines and snippets of popular song, and stream of consciousness, autobiographical interludes from the author’s life. The book has no more plot than your life or mine, but is endlessly fascinating.

This opening book of the trilogy starts in 1900. We are introduced to several separate protagonist whom we follow from childhood onward. Mac is a poor Irish kid from a radical, working class family. He ends up in the printing business and in the IWW (Wobblies). Janey is one of the new, young women who tries to make it on her own in the big city as a stenographer and secretary. J. Ward Morehouse is a poor boy made good, Horatio Alger style — clawing his way up through real estate, advertising, public relations, and advantageous marriages. Eleanor Stoddard is an arty young woman who powers her way to success in interior design. And Charlie Anderson is a rudderless young mechanic from Minnesota. We follow each in turn, in fits and starts, from 1900 to the opening of the Great War, each illustrating a different slice of the great American pie.

Interspersed with these protagonist are compressed, short biographies of those who made history during this period. William Jennings Bryant, Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Fighting Bob La Follette are the great personages featured in The 42nd Parallel.

This is my second reading through this monumental work. I highly recommend experiencing it in audiobook form to get its full effect. The cutting in and out between all the various elements has an incredibly modern feel, not unlike channel surfing, and the audiobook allows you to get the maximum benefit from this experience. And don’t stop with The 42nd Parallel — all three books (including 1919 and The Big Money) are necessary to experience the full sweep of Dos Passos’s brilliant epic work.

A great read -- if you like tales similar to Steinbeck and Hemingway, you'll appreciate the stories of the working men and women at the turn of the 20th century. His style immerses you into a number of individual lives that were lived and the events of the day -- workers rights, unemployment, "the American dream," young love, marriage, women's rights, family structure in the towns, all thrown against the backdrop of the world events of this tumultuous time (America emergent, World War I, the Russian Revolution, the Mexican Revolution, etc). Each character weaves their own tale, and there begins to be some overlap of their lives within these stories -- I am sure it will persist in parts 2 and 3 (1919 and The Big Money). I liked it so much, I would re-read it, but I have so many other books to jump on to. I will save the second and third parts of the "U.S.A." trilogy for later.

I've come around on the newsreels, but I just can't warm up to the camera's eyes. The meat, though, is the individual stories that wend their way through. Overall, this is excellent.

Στις αρχές του 20ου αιώνα ο κόσμος ήταν έτοιμος για την επανάσταση είτε μέσω πολέμου, είτε μέσω διαφορετικών πολιτικών προσεγγίσεων, είτε μέσω σπασίματος κοινωνικών κ οικονομικών αγκυλώσεων, κ η πρόζα του Ντος Πάσος, χωρίς συναισθηματισμούς, το αποδίδει γλαφυρά κ απίστευτα ζωντανά

Mastaapne lugu, mis on USA triloogia esimene osa. Mul tekkis võrdlus, et see on nagu ameeriklaste Tõde ja Õigus. Peale lugemist sain aru, mida mõeldi raamatu tagakaane tutvustuses lause all "Sel ajal kui Fitzgerald ja Hemingway kultiveerisid kirjanduskriitiku Edmund Wilsoni sõnul oma väikest põldu, võttis Dos Passos üles harida terve maailma". Raamatus käsitletakse läbi mitme tegelase elusaatuse ühiskondlikke protsesse Ameerikas ja Euroopas 20. sajandi algul. Kahjuks on minu teadmised Ameerika ajaloost lünklikud, seepärast võis ka mingi osa sisust kaduma minna. Aga hea külg on see, et nüüd tekkis huvi Ameerika selle perioodi ajaloo kohta lisateavet uurida. Kummardus ka tõlkijale väga hea tõlke eest.

A better title for this chore would be “NOW! That’s What I Call America.” I'll get to that later.

The 42nd Parallel is unique and groundbreaking in that, for its time, it found new and interesting ways to bore its reader to tears. First, it relentlessly bludgeons its reader with its annoyingly liberal usage of free indirect speech. Rather than giving its characters voice and motion, The 42nd Parallel prides itself on summary, exposition, and trading off engagement for its crappy style. Second, it kneecaps the little momentum it gains by liberally fragmenting and disjointing its narratives with unnecessary tripe. The first bag of tripe is “The Camera Eye,” a hokey cornucopia of stream-of-consciousness hogwash that can and should be readily discarded; the second bag of tripe is a collection of highly subjective, propagandistic biographies/obituaries that decide it is best to honor its subject by giving its language an E.E. Cummings-Stupid-Indents-For-Crappy-Slam-Poets treatment; the third is “Newsreel,” a similarly fragmented collection of actual headlines that, regardless of the reader’s knowledge of historical context, functions as the equivalent of the “spinning newspaper” gimmick, only takes itself way more seriously, is less subtle, and somehow feels dumber. All these sections crowd out the many stagnant narrative threads that make up the remainder of the book, but even the stories of its five main protagonists have the life sucked out of them by Dos Passos’ insufferable stylistic decisions. Dos Passos seems afraid of letting his characters speak, either because he just loves this ‘free indirect speech’ thing that he must’ve picked up in his college Austen seminar, or his dialogue sucks. Hint: both are true. Examples can be furnished upon request.

Narratively these stories interweave in a Short Cuts way (tenuously, thematically, contrived), and the narratives are more or less interchangeable. People migrate to different cities so that Dos Passos can name-drop and capture the American experience by pinpointing various locales across the country. They all think similarly and use the word “and” so much that the reader never wants to see it again (examples can be furnished upon request, but it is easier to flip to any page and read it). Besides overuse of conjunctions, these radicals spend the rest of their time sitting on trains and getting divorced.

Dos Passos robs his story of anything engaging by employing the stylistic techniques he uses. The extra sections leave the book fragmented, disjointed, dated, and a little embarrassing; the free indirect speech and casual splicing of margins and dialogue give a much-unneeded degree of separation between reader and events; and, well, the parts of the story that aren’t just accounted, delineated, or summarized (which is, sadly and tediously, most of the book) are still boring. It is one of the most tedious books I’ve read all year, and one that would wrench my stomach to pick it up.

Again, a better title for The 42nd Parallel is “NOW! That’s What I Call America.” It’s meant to chronicle a specific time in American history and give a snapshot of the scenery through words, but in retrospect, its pieces seem disjointed, unrelated, and quite dated. Dos Passos was also popular in his time but (supposedly) faded into obscurity; I suppose the same is true for NOW!’s contenders. The analogy works also in this manner: I hated listening to NOW! 1, and by no means will I call the Time-Life number to order NOW! 2 and NOW! 3. And I never want to see the word “and” again.

To any reader out there seeking an American chronicle that captures multiple perspectives, understands diversity of experience, and gives voice to its people, read Studs Terkel. Any Studs Terkel. Anything, anything but this.

Dos Passos' legacy, if there is one, is largely understated or forgotten, and, in my view, not necessarily through any major fault of his. In the 20th century, as cultural and aesthetic values shifted to favor more linear, romantic, cinematic storytelling, Dos Passos' vignettes, broad character range, and historical relevance faded into the background to be appreciated primarily by literary aficionados. I think that Hemingway's and Fitzgerald's books would be more easily adaptable to the silver screen; to me, they read like old movies. There is a bygone romance. Their books are digestible. Conversely, it seems to me that Dos Passos, who was also a painter, was more in touch with the avant-garde. His stylistic ambition and the breadth of his writing are what prompt me to call him an artist, rather than simply a novelist--a fine distinction on its own, but the appellation "artist" implies that he melded principles and techniques from different artforms to produce a new kind of novel. The page was his canvas, rather than a mere receptacle for words.

At times it seems that The 42nd Parallel is a nonlinear narrative. The linear character development is regularly interrupted with sections called Newsreel and Camera Eye, among others. These are often abstract, stream-of-consciousness bits of writing. These do not directly support the plot. The ordinary novel reader's expectation that a story must be told clearly and concisely from A to B to C will likely limit his or her appreciation of The 42nd Parallel. Reading is, at its best, a creative act, which requires the reader to interpret and infer. Hemingway, who was Dos Passos' friend and fellow member of the Lost Generation, had some of that same mystery in his books, though Hemingway's works stand more stably on their own as straight narratives; the subtleties enrich his stories, but it is not imperative to recognize them in order to appreciate the story. In The 42nd Parallel, Dos Passos is forthright with his abstractions; rather than condemn this work on that basis, it is probably best to read for yourself, consider the challenges to your aesthetic sensibilities and ask, "What is a novel really?" After all, many of us read with the intent to grow.

I have always favored novels whose characters appear aimless, books whose characters appear to be in search of something, but they do not exactly know what that thing is. Naturally, the execution of that aimlessness will leave many readers frustrated, asking, "Is this going anywhere?" But life is generally not a series of meaningful, cinematic events. There is a lot of fluff. A lot of time spent waiting for the phone to ring. A lot of time spent driving from Here to There, where more time is spent waiting for Him or Her or It. In The 42nd Parallel, whether these interruptions are disruptions is a matter of personal taste. I gather that the poets and painters among us may possess a larger appetite for abstraction; for them, the seemingly unrelated abstract bits offer interpretive hints and serve to paint a general feeling which is to accompany the character development. These sections span beyond the characters' lives and present a broad portrait of their rapidly changing, industrial society.

In other words, the linear, character-driven chapters give a street view, while the Camera Eye and Newsreel chapters provide an overhead view. Together, these perspectives amount to an understanding of the early 20th century that is both personalized and generalized--and at times, unromantic. These characters are not simply struggling with their hearts, as are some of Hemingway's quintessential characters. They are not conspicuously concerned with upward social mobility and an envy of high society elites. These characters were struggling to eat, to establish careers. They were struggling with their sense of identity in an increasingly industrialized, materialistic, cosmopolitan society.

Some have complained about the number of Dos Passos' characters and how shallowly he paints them. Would the book have been better if he had limited the number of characters, focused in on a select few, and really developed them? Would the book have been better if its loose plotline had not been interrupted with abstract fragments? Actually, it is for these reasons that I love the book. It is, in these ways, a product of the society in which it was created--few establish deep understandings of one another, and the plot of our lives is constantly interrupted with commercial breaks and ridiculous newsbits and other "information." We, too, are a lost generation. The 42nd Parallel is probably more relevant now than it ever has been--that is, if you are paying attention.